Willie Ragland and the Benefits of Temperance

I awoke today thinking about Willie Ragland. Maybe it was because I watched a little of the Olympics ping-pong matches yesterday. It may be called table tennis for the Olympics, but it was ping-pong when I knew and hated Willie more than six decades ago.

     Corporal Willie Ragland was a tall, husky, young black man who spent the great majority of his free time at Sampigny Chemical Depot in the rec-tent playing ping-pong. Willie owned a special paddle with soft foam surfaces that provided him great control of the little white ball. He also owned a devastating smash and a perfect record of wins amongst all challengers.

     Willie was from Chicago, a fellow mid-westerner. The thing he did best, after ping-pong, was to talk, unless you took seriously his yarns about encounters and escapades with various members of the opposite sex—his favorite subject, far and away. As he was young, black and from Chicago, I discounted most of what he said, but no one could discount his ping-pong abilities.

     The 337^th Chemical Depot at Sampigny was a part of the Army’s Com-Z located in the Muese Valley in the northeast corner of France. The munitions supply and storage base for US troops occupying Germany after WWII ceased to exist more than a quarter century ago. The small, centuries-old town of Sampigny is still home for about 750 residents, but their number is declining at a rate of about one percent per year. It is set in the quiet and idyllic French countryside with no apparent reason for existence before or after the presence of the US military.

     During my tenure there, I considered it the un-deodorized armpit of France. Its only recreational outlets for the 100 or so GIs on base were two tiny bars. One, operated by two, once-pretty, middle-aged women, was aptly named The Three-Eyed Sisters. I cannot remember the name of the other, located just a few paces north of the Depot’s main gate, but I vividly recall the two sorry, locally-brewed alcoholic beverages it served. The unsavory beer often contained unidentifiable particulates and required careful decantation into a glass while attempting to leave the majority of solids in the bottle—a task less and less skillfully accomplished with each imbibed bottle, no matter how concentrated the bleary-eyed effort.

     The local champagne, know to me only phonetically as “moose-er-er,” was palatable and cheap. However, often it was necessary for the proprietor to open two or three bottles before finding one that could pop and fizz. All this within the close dingy walls of the bar with no entertainment beyond idle conversation, no fast foods, no desirable damsels.

     Thus, with little to attract me off base on free evenings and new movies at the mess hall only once a month, there was ample time, if little desire, to drift into the rec-tent where Willie was enthroned and taking on all challengers. Whoever won a game owned the one and only table until defeated. When Willie was playing, no one else got to play more than one game at a time.

     So, I took up ping-pong. Casually at first but with more purpose after being ignominiously dispatched repeatedly by Willie with my paddle between my legs. Evenings off base at the local bistros became more infrequent. Within weeks, my defensive game improved, and by the end of the second month, I had a serve. It cleared the net by a fraction of a millimeter and then bounced off the table at high speed and a reckless angle. Time for another Willie challenge.

     My newfound ping-pong proficiency took Willie off guard. I took an early lead, returning his smashes, stunning him with my serve, but eventually he prevailed. Close, but no cigar until that fateful day when I returned all of his best serves and volleys, and my devilish serve completely frustrated him. I won.

     Willie lost interest in ping-pong, and even his yarns and lies lost their luster. Not long thereafter, he shipped out to return home and leave my memory forever.

     Until today.